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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • I guess I mean this in a relative way.

    I can talk about Star Wars and basically everyone I know has a lot of context. Most people have watched a good amount of it. Even people who are explicitly not nerds know about it. Same with most comic stuff.

    Meanwhile Star Trek is still a lot more niche. People know the bare basics of what it is, but that’s about it. With the exception of my SO, I’ve met a grand total of two people who watch it.

    Also if someone knows a lot about Star Wars or Marvel they don’t necessarily know a lot about other nerd IPs. Meanwhile the people who knew about Star Trek also knew about shit like Farscape, Dark Matter, and other IP that just gets confused looks from most people.


  • The internet is a place where nuance goes to die and everyone talks out of their ass. Watchmen was all about nuance. Here’s why I think this post is full of shit:

    Rorschach was an extremely flawed individual. However that title could basically be applied to every single hero except Nite Owl I. A huge portion of Watchmen revolves around that while none of the characters are necessarily admirable they all have some redeeming qualities.

    Calling Rorschach an "incel man child " is an idiotic oversimplification of his character. He didn’t decide he hated women after watching too many Andrew Tate videos; Rorschach went though an extreme amount of childhood trauma. We see how horrifying the situation was via flashbacks. Even after all of that, he manages to rise above it all and become a genuine hero. He only went full psycho after being exposed to the most vile shit Moore could get printed. There’s even a whole subplot which more or less mocks attempts to be an armchair psychiatrist and dismiss him outright.

    Rorschach’s philosophy also doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A huge part of his role is an ideological counterpoint to Ozymandius, who is the ultimate “ends justify the means” type of person. The entire last act makes you appreciate Rorschach’s philosophy a lot more. The ending of the book presents a “Lady or the Tiger?” situation where you’re not really sure which of the two was more right.

    Finally, he has a decent number of badass moments. The whole “you’re locked in with me” is straight up cool. It is on some level meant to be such. It’s hard not to look at him and be on some level impressed.

    Rorschach isn’t someone you’re supposed to idealize. However you’re not supposed to just dismiss him either.







  • So, as it’s been stated, Wayland is still not universally better than X. There are still bugs in places. Gaming is still an issue. Kwin’s implementation still isn’t complete enough to be reliably introduced as the default.

    This is after years and years of work. Yes, making an entirely new display protocol is hard. However Wayland was introduced as the “eventual X replacement” when I was in high school. I’m 30 now. I’ve heard some variation of “Wayland is almost ready” since my senior year of college.

    At some point it becomes exhausting. At this point when someone says something along the lines of “in a year or two, Wayland will reach a point where X.org will be a thing of the past” my immediate reaction is to call bullshit.




  • I’m surprised Sundar isn’t on the hot seat at this point.

    People are gonna be like “oh well he presided over X revenue growth and that’s all investors care about”. Investors also care about future returns.

    Under Sundar, Google has more or less completely failed to diversify. They’ve had the advantage on several products, only for them to dick around while their competitors established (or re-established) dominance. The areas where they have market dominance went from “we have the far superior product” to “this Lowkey sucks, but I can’t think of anything better”.

    As far as I’m concerned Sundar is Google’s Sculley. Google will go for a long time under its own momentum, but eventually the wheels will come off.

    Meanwhile Nadella is getting paid a quarter as much.






  • So assuming you actually have to…

    You’ll need to do something that doesn’t come up in the social zeitgeist that often, but is instantly recognizable to anyone from that era.

    Maybe talk about how a lot of the time people’s watches said different times and you didn’t know which ones were right?

    Alternatively you can share some personal anecdote that relates to well known trends at the time. Like talk about listening to smells like teen spirit while smoking cigarettes stolen from your friend’s older brother.